The goateed orchestra leader who asked America to Sing Along With Mitch gone at 99.
Miller who mocked the 60s with his laid -back style and follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-a-long lyrics died in Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan after a short illness.
Miller had been a A&R exec at Columbia records making sold gold with music luminaries Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett but passed on Elvis and Buddy Holly calling rock "a disease".
The Sing-a- Long with Mitch format was first test marketed on LPs and then became a hit NBC series in 1961.
His stiff armed conducting and catch phrases soon relegated arch-rival Lawrence Welk to champagne bottled muzak.
Miller’s TV show ranked in the top 20 for the 1961-62 season, and soon kids everywhere were parodying Miller’s elfish style.
The show also intro’d sultry thrush Leslie Uggams to the world.
When Miller and his choral group had a No. 1 hit in 1955 with "The Yellow Rose of Texas," and that led to his sing-along records. In 1961 Miller also provided two tracks set to Dimitri Tiomkin‘s music on the soundtrack to The Guns of Navarone and in 1962 they sang the theme of The Longest Day over the end credits. They also whistled the hit "The Bridge on the River Kwai".
In 1965 they sang the "Major Dundee March", the theme to Sam Peckinpah‘s Major Dundee. The film bombed but the song was a hit for years.
One of his records was used in 1993 by the FBI to drive out the Branch Davidian cult from its Waco compound
And at the height of Mitch’s popularity, everyone knew "to be kind to our web-footed friends because a duck was somebody’s muddah".
So long, maestro.
